Below are poems to the night sky written as I watched the celestial orbs transforming themselves - moving, edging, and oozing among the branches, leaves, and trunks of trees. For those who have access to woods and are willing to stay out late or get up early and can take the weather during the prime northern latitude viewing period of November through April, this is a most stimulating and inspiring activity. Also see www.oozingthemoon.com for a prose companion to these verses.

 

                  NEW SCOPES FOR THE SKY  - D. Roth 2005-07 © 

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours – To Autumn, John Keats                 

 

Prelude

                                               

For millennia night sky and woods

have existed in two separate worlds

“O the moon is beautiful in the trees”

but after that they were oil and water

Heaven and Hell may have been married but

heavens and forest never met up

understandably so for sky was mystery

What are those lights and what do they hold?

Some are fixed while others wander

Are they held in crystalline spheres

circling the center of God’s creation

or is it we who move and perception’s illusion?

What pulls on what and so forth and so on?

All that intruded was unwelcome obstruction

Now that the unknown is steadily receding

and final equations ascend the horizon

there is no more need for such segregation

Trees and sky may safely co-habit

Science secure, imagination claims its share

and carves a place for naked eye seers

to rub, squeeze, and ooze the orbs

with leaves, branches, twigs of trees

and when these ministrations are duly performed

new worlds of transformed light and space unfold

Tree as instrument, light as sound

disappearing photons spinning mind around

building lines and forms of beauty unrivaled

“Space” and “Matter” flip and “Space Forests” form

a dark eye adaptation of uncanny nature

all of these and many more arise

in the tree/sky night woods continuum

But in this realm a new scope is needed

Eyes entranced held firmly loose, melting softly into light

sensing, feeling, molding, merging

imagination unleashed disbelief suspended

Still I do not wish to claim too much

This is not Quantum Physics after all

But it does have its own Indeterminacy Principle

amazing eye evoking wonder

 

What is a Space Forest?

 

A Space Forest is not oxymoronic

though it surely sounds to be

but a “real” exotic poetic phenomenon

perhaps experienced by only a few

except maybe thousands of so-named “primals”

who lacked the means to record what they saw

it’s related to oozing the light of the orbs

and followed for me quite closely thereafter

it’s a kind of a trance but full of awareness

permissive of movement and walking around

in which light and matter seem to trade places

“real” trees blacken and donate their glow to interstitial spaces

which, acquiring light, spectrally shine

with the form, the shape, the bark of “trees”

space and matter have seemingly flipped

creating a likeness that is deeply arresting

sometimes to the point of outright deception

there are different “species” of such “forests”

but the great boled looming Temple of Karnak

named for its hulking pillar-like trunks

is certainly the most awesome and inspiring

all are beautiful, strange, and ephemeral

a glory of night woods light conception

 

Moon Time

 

There was a time when I said “many moons ago”

in ironic imitation of false Amerindian speak

but that is more than six months ago

for that is how I really reckon time

 

Six months now since I re-met the Moon

the Moon I bayed at as a toddler

forcing my parents to cage me in a crib

or the warm summer Moon of years ago

when I walked my streets in a wondering daze

searching for porch light to pluck and squeeze

in the near darkness of my light-controlled neighborhood

 

Then I left her until last October

as I lay on a bench in a wooded grove

and saw how she could ooze through leaves and branches

and make music of a kind I had never heard before -

music that enraptured and stilled me like no other

 

And so it has gone for six Moons now

the wheel of this internal clock turning slowly

making time stretch out sidereally

This morning I go to the greet the Gibbous

 

On the Beam

 

Teeter totter maya maker

and night light fancy slaker

illuminator of the early morning woods awaker

that’s what they call this Moon

 

She’ll raise up a ridge and perch atop it

then slowly drop it before dumbstruck eyes

she’ll lift up the watcher to a parallel berth

and so back and forth it goes

 

All manner of landscapes she can make

from plain to farm to woodland and ravine

with just some trees and a wandering dream

and her own little tectonic shake

 

Moon Tunnel

 

Brought low by an arboreal trance

she lay at the bottom of a dark tunnel

scintillating and permutating like no earthly being

but even then my mind reeled for the switch

seemed far too much to explain

 

She beckoned on and my eyes eagerly followed

“reason less feel more I’ll be kind do not fear”

so I heard her calming voice prevail

and then as I readied to take the plunge

that seasonal tickle grew strong and clear

 

I chided the air but there was no use

and so the spell was explosively broken

then I heard a voice on high declaim

“Try again Señor you’re no Orpheus

but you just might be okay”

 

Lightning Bugged

 

Fireflies sure can look like airplane lights

flying low to the ground

when you’re trancing out

on the oozing embers of an orange moon

 

Though it’s the end of June

I had forgotten about these little woodland sprites

their sudden appearance caused

a temporary confusion of a kind

 

That almost always turns to laughing revelation

only the night woods

and the transformational moon

can fool so felicitously

 

Siddhi Seer   

 

My only Siddhi is of a specious kind

I can see through space forests to the sky behind

orbs and airplanes that should be blocked

are clearly visible beyond the trees chock-a-block

it’s purely illusion, it’s all a trance you say

do it just once and you’ll want to play

 

With a little lumen, perhaps, lost in the sky

but through a space tree it will transfix the eye

this form of strange matter seizes small light

ramps up the voltage to make it shine bright

it has something to do with contrast, I claim

and also the tree trunk which gives it a frame

 

When all these conditions are aligned just so

the star acquires a mysterious glow

emerging out of an indeterminate ground

paces away in the close surround

the paradox of seeming both there and here

what’s known as far yet seen as near

 

More or Less a Mirage

 

You really did it to me today, Luna

you pushed the Space Forest envelope

farther than I thought it could be pushed

for a few seconds there you really had me thinking

that those space trees were for real

 

So I had just risen after looking

at you and your creations

but had somehow lost my bearings

because the “trees” had lost all marks of illusion -

“Oh, so the real ones are back now” -

 

Yet within a minute they had vanished

from eyes still clinging to their solidity

try me again tomorrow

you’re making this interesting

do you think you could help me see the reverse?

 

Solstice Morning

 

Sitting on the bench

just before the dawn

when an interfoliated gleam

held me fast and tight

 

almost oozing like a star

something must be up I knew

and there it was for sure

competing with the sun

 

a ghostly row of space trees

transparent but with form

not mere scrims or cellulose

but a little ridge of corm

 

Full Moon 

 

Daughter of illusion luminous yet empty

in the woods among the branches and leaves

your cool lubricity, ever moving, transforms

into phantasms of surpassing strangeness and beauty

 

Self-proclaimed well-announced sleights of mind

have made your intentions clear

so that’s why you have always beguiled

poet and prophet and all those fallen under your spell

 

Old Moon

 

Imagine how carefully the Ancients

must have scrutinized the marks

of the Moon without aid of scope or glass

through cloudless unsullied vault lit skies

 

For evidence of wetness or dryness

reflection or effulgence

celestial or terrestrial

seas or vapors

 

Although knowing she is but a rock of congealed dust

I, too, regard her with Babylonian eyes

without scope or glass

through sullied skies cleansed by trees and branches

 

But not for signs of origin or nature

but for beauty, revelation, and self-nature

 

Phoenix Moon

 

Slow slow

even slower now

down to only a few photons

hold on hold on

the best are last

less is more more is less

except when you go double

which is almost always

two eyes two heads

two forms two anythings

better than one

in the light of your woods

in the woods of your light                 

 

                               Closer

 

Sometimes the moon will squeeze her way through

          and emblazon herself on some leaves

                like an heraldic symbol of old

                    that’s when she comes

                             the closest

 

                   Except when enraptured

                         she emblazons

                             the mind   

                                   O

          

                                   O

                             the mind

                         she emblazons

                   Except when enraptured

 

                            the closest

                    that’s when she comes

               like an heraldic symbol of old

        and am emblazon herself on some leaves

 Sometimes the moon will squeeze her way through

 

                                Closer

 

Earthscaper

 

O magic ridge maker

and overall general earth shaker

you uplift and drop me

on your cliffs, ravines, and gorges

 

What is the power of your light

that it can accomplish this?

What is the trickery you perform?

Do you control the tides of mind?

 

Later

 

Perhaps it is just a passing fancy

but you seem to have made

these trees come closer

can you still conjure even when

 

You have not yet risen and the sun still shines

maybe it is just the stillness that has settled

over these later afternoon woods

but could you have made this silence too?

 

A Few More in Summer

 

At the risk of being thought

five cards short of a straight

there are a few more sights

to be seen in the night woods

 

Meditating into a light trance

and darkening the scene

a translucent space tree arises

which then slowly decays

 

Leaving a residue that draws near

and catches hold of the breath

illuminating it like winter’s condensation

puzzling in its beauty and strangeness

 

Or a trance-dependent vortex breaks off

from the background and approaches

proceeding like a pendulum

to move hypnotically in perfect tick tock rhythm

 

But best of all, perhaps, and

least subject to doubts of capacity

is just the gradual increase of light

which periodically clarifies into a new picture

 

Space Invasion                                                                                    

 

Trancing on the Planet Rouge

between some open leaves

when down down down it came

giving me a fright

 

So it hovered there a bit

looking close at hand

and suddenly up it shot

like a ship at launch

 

Up up up it climbed

back to its rightful place

then my Mars Invasion was done

at least until tonight

 

Dying Embers       

 

Dying with the dying embers

of the oozing moon

would be my nightingale farewell

when the time has come

and if the circumstances are right

could I replay it in my mind

and make it my own reality?

not yet I think

 

So moon after moon

I return to these woods

to watch as she becomes an exploding star

disappearing shard by shard

into her own roseate vortex

nothing else is so beautiful

nothing else tells me

going out could be so good

 

The Sunrise Nearing Moon           

 

The sunrise nearing moon

moves better more fluidly

dancing with her devotee

to and fro, it seems

 

It must be her peaking brightness

in the pale blue

which slides her through

the quick-silvered ether

 

That brightness that her consort

so willingly bestows just at this time

without any diminishment

of her nocturnal luster

 

Her diamonds sparkle her seas deepen

her marble glistens

her mirror reflects perfectly

that light that soon will overcome her

 

Forest Landlord         

 

The Moon is an inspired landlord

who knows how to make use of space

she divides and subdivides her tenants

into rooms of gloom and glow

jerry-built, chock-a-block, confusing

and endlessly back and side

 

She runs a mysterious strange-lit flop

for here no leases are ever given

and the rooms are constantly changing

but there’s always an eager waiting list

ready to pay the rent

or just to stand around and gawk

 

Lunar Anthem         

 

I saw a Golden Apple of the Hesperides

hovering right in front

I thought I might reach out and touch it

but didn’t for fear I would affront

 

Someday someone might see the Grail

though I’m not worthy of that

but for the pure of heart and brave of mind

the moon might just do that

 

For her light is truly magical

and with her friends the trees

she can make almost anything

for those the spirits please

 

And so I come here each new month

to see what she might do

and like that famous bovine leaper

to softly mutter 

 

Glow Worm Hole  

 

There was a glowworm on the path today

which never before had I seen

at first I thought it was a low light spirit

and then a harbinger of something new

for upon arrival at my favorite spot

there was another right next to the bench

with a gleam that lit up its small patch of night

 

I wanted to stare at it fixedly

but had some meditating to do

so splitting the difference I went to and fro

until at a moment of happy transition

when the light increased up above

and then after seconds of puzzling delay

its grounded extension came on

 

Ah! what a marvelous trick this seemed

for it was as if I had slowed down its speed

I heard Albert laugh and turn with glee

“this cannot happen it just cannot be

unless in a Glow Worm Hole’s Singularity”

then to top it all off lights all over the grove went on

as a car turned around in the dark

 

Vice Versa              

 

Sound is light

light is sound

in the starlit vaulted night

orb will move tree will squeeze

it takes just two or is it three

to make this empyreal ecstasy

 

Merely change the times change the rounds

be willing to lie on bench or ground

suffer the winds and bear the cold

unless your home is Elysium

otherwise bundle up hunker down

and hold on for a celestial ride

 

The Moonlight Concerto       

 

Twinkle twinkle quarter moon

up above the sky so high

I wonder how you do it?

 

Squeezed and shattered by the leaves

blown and fluttered by an early fall breeze

entranced and doubled by a duff-lying gaze

Ah, then what music you can play!

 

Off and on up and down the rows

pop pop doolebop

begins the morning show

 

And now with eyes held quite fast

the sidewise sparks of symphonic stars

are just as much exciting

 

The wind dies down

the trees are still 

no need to leave

another round is coming

 

Tricks of the Full Moon Trade   

 

Moon, your leaves have the habit

of hovering in air

they catch the light

while the stems disappear

but I know what you’re doing

 

You say you can make space trees

thirty minutes before sunrise

while I’m walking the paved path to the lake

you’re full of it, Moon

no way those aren’t real ones up ahead

 

Whoops! I eat my words

they’re moon made for sure

and now they’re gone

you really tricked me this time

but that is what you are for

 

Keyboard in the Sky         

 

With the right space and just enough leaves

Orion and Sirius will put on a show

Sirius with her brightness is hard to snuff out

and then when she wanes her double breaks through

squeezing and oozing the filaments of light

 

Orion, of course, is a whole constellation

with Betelgeuse and Rigel to name just a few

but the three who hold up his trousers so well

are the ones who can really belt out a tune

 

one flicks off and two stay on

two stay on and one flicks off

all three flick off and then all three flick on

and that’s the way it goes with this keyboard in the sky

then for a coda one will stick just so and come

at you like a laser beam and pop right in your face

 

Walking the Moon     

 

You need the trees to walk the moon

you need their parallax to get her to groove

for all by herself she’s perched on high

but in the woods she’ll strut on by

 

So off you go two by two

hand in hand metaphorically speaking

weaving in and out among the leaves

exchanging glances, a flirtatious tease        

 

If I Ran The Sky By Zeus

 

Jupiter, Arcturus, and the Moon

once again we’re a perfect equilateral cartoon

I thought this was just a one-time deal

but we’re a periodic constellation of lasting appeal

 

So I think I’ll change the ecliptic

so we can always be really near

and become the Three Amigos

and constantly reappear

 

I know The Fates will be unhappy

with what I decree right here

but let them take a flying leap

for my mortals need some cheer

 

Upon the night with their mouths agape

they’ll dance beneath the stars

they’ll go bacchanalian those wild rapscallions

and salute us with the Dionysian Grape

 

Saturnalia           

 

Saturn ran his rings around me

getting into a groove

 

Up and down and around he went

in tranceformational ooze

 

His secrets I thought he would disclose

the sights they were supreme

 

Instead he sent me a shooting star

that knocked me off my beam

 

For when one is lying on the ground

in an entrancing state

 

A sudden flash of intense light

will open Heaven’s Gate

 

Second Nature    

 

The moon can create a second nature

if she’s looked upon just right

through the lens of an evergreen holly

or other leaf that’s tight

 

In in in she folds

as the light begins to fade

closer and closer and closer she comes

preparing her little charade

 

There on the cusp of extinction

on the verge of projective surprise

is a darkly glowing landscape

that outwits the skeptic surmise

 

It could be an evening river view

seen through a glass that’s pale

and the moonlight itself is there of course

a bright bank past which the viewer sails

 

Oozing Anthem         

 

Why just look at Orion’s Belt

when you can see its stars melt

into the veil of leaves

put up by November’s trees

 

A soundsight most ineffable

musically inexpressible

worthy of a Keats

and a starry ‘Gale

 

Had I a voice more used

I might have waked this wondrous muse

but I know the ground

which plays its sound

 

It’s always out there

wherever tree and orb collide

or past each other slowly slide

entrancing ear and teasing eye

 

Whence Cometh the Space Forest?               

 

Whence cometh the Space Forest?

from those who see the flip sides of light and matter

who ooze the moon and stop and stare

or do whatever it takes

to upset the quotidian order of vision

who believe in the E=mc²                 

of entranced night sky and woods perception

who suspend disbelief and are suspended in turn

who give thanks to the night

from which dreams are born

 

Or when an orb is oozed and a space forest rises

sometimes it’s like a piece of exposed photo paper

placed in a bath of developing fluid

where it gradually forms and thickens

and when it’s time to go

it fades like that paper struck by light

because there is no permanent “fixer” here

as there is no permanent fixer anywhere

you just have to go back night by night

and be exposed all over again

 

For it is more than mirage

an evanescent illusion

terms far too limiting and constrained

but the great spirit Eros

Diotima explains to Socrates

love, yearning and “birth in beauty”

these are the parents

not simply staring at a spot

neither a necessary

nor a sufficient condition

 

Trompe Royal      

 

Is it “negative” space becoming positive matter

or positive space becoming “negative” matter

either way it doesn’t matter

for whatever the formulation

it is one of nature’s most trancendental

verified again this morning lying on the ground

as a holly oozed the Lemon Slice

conjuring a magnificent Space Forest

then an all-encircling Big Top

through which shone the Moon

and, to baffled wonderment, the members of the Dipper

as if painted on the canvas hide of a Great Lodge

by the star-worshippers of an Amerindian Tribe

and at the top a wide smoke hole

with the blackest black sky to uphold

 

Space Gallery      

 

A Picture’s Platonic Higher Form

I think I saw just now

a giant space forest curtain

and then a Japanese screen

I was in the Freer Gallery of Asian Art

lying on the ground

sotto voce oozing Jupiter

who is always quite diverting

but can also be profound

he’s the one who pulled the trick

I just looked around

 

It was not very stable

but years of practice made me able

to hold it fast and steady

I saw its straight-edged panels

angled in and out

and its carefully wrought boughs and limbs

painted on its paper

it was a sight most strange and beautiful

next time I go to the Freer

maybe I’ll say I’ve seen theirs in the ether

or maybe not

 

Blow Hard Jupiter

 

SOS                

 

Telegrapher of the Titanic

seemed Jupiter today

flicking out frantic messages

from the wind swept sea

blow blow blow the ice trees sway

dots and dashes repeatedly sent

but not for his world

one two spheres down torn and rent

 

Jamming of the Spheres      

 

Double Jupiter was Charlie Parker today

going up and down the sax like there’s no tomorrow

the wind was kickin’

Mars was blowin’

Arcturus was soloin’

when the woods wind trio came marchin’ in

 

Space Forest Surprise  

 

For three years now

I’ve seen the Space Forest

and still my eyes do not deceive me

It’s as real as many things around

it just doesn’t last too long

and withers in the sun like an ice cream cone

but an hour or more before his rise

it’s always a strange eye-blinking surprise

this can’t happen this can’t be true

I just saw an airplane fly through

 

Harpo Moon    

 

The Moon is a night woods tracker

who will stalk you step by step

mirror all your movements

as you will mirror hers

but what if someday she goes Hollywood

and becomes a “Harpo” Moon

playing fun house reflections

and a new moving tune

then you’ll know you’ve left the earth

and gone beyond the Moon

to the empyrean of the Higher Spheres

where different rules attune

 

Dancing with the Stars

 

When it’s half-past leaves

and a breeze is up

that’s the time to lie on the ground

and dance with the morning stars

 

Sirius and Rigel are a fine lumen pair

but the others work as well

the trick is to look not directly on

but to hold them in peripheral view

 

Then off and on off and on

off and on they go

hyper-kinetic semaphores

flashing the star-struck

 

Space Dogwoods     

 

My little Dogwood

you’ve grown frumpy on your fringes

but I do not despair

you and your kind are eternal

and not only in the gardens of earth

but in the night sky as well

for this morning I saw your space sisters

while lying on the ground

looking at Vega through a cluster of new leaves

rise up photosynthesized on starlight

and the entranced waters of forgetfulness

Just a transient trance some will say, maybe even I,

but you know better

 

Later

 

In the May bright sun of mid-afternoon

I see more fully now the alchemy you perform

on starlight and sky, Eastern Common Hoptree

if that is indeed your name

Japanese print against high blue

as much yellow sky as leaf

the perfect soil in which my eye

implants the white night flower

the hand-raising medium of strange delight

 

Space Forest Philosophy     

 

If a Space Tree falls in the forest

will it make a sound

if there’s no one there to hear it

or will it even have fallen

if there’s nobody there to see it

or can it even fall a priori?

all such questions being solipsistic

unless someone else sees one

otherwise they vanish with me

yet the words are still there

to re-seed them some day

then that someone might find

better, stronger words than I

to describe the stars coming off and on

up or down peripherally and panoptically

through these trees

 

Fact          

 

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

      Are sweeter;” - Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

 

Oozing the doubling evanescing orbs

among the branches of the night sky

is a proof most personal

that never has a greater poetic truth

been uttered ever

 

Music begins in the brain, settles in the stomach

rises to the heart and is purified in mind

distilled into a serenity surpassing understanding

The Music of the Spheres is not just metaphor

it is Fact!

 

Proof

 

Through sky and vitreous ether

I heard her beat this morning

moving among the hollies

a pulse so soft and subtle

it could have been my breath, my heart

or a syntactic nerve

but, no, it was the Moon, I’m sure

 

When the stars flick on

in a space-forested stare

it’s a call from another world

so quiet so gentle so soft so still

so black so white so spectrally shining

so unexpected and expected

it’s the orbs tuning up to heaven

 

Panoptically trancing

on a space forest stockade

nothing is sighted directly on

so all is marvelously seen

coming off and on

like deep space spirits

light year fire flies

the stars are the essence of music

 

Thoreau’s Summer Sky  

 

Thoreau loved the summer sky

for its dense spangle of dimmer stars

suggesting space, depth and infinity

and not so much the brazen few

that blaze forth in the winter

he still had a choice

that most of us do not

only once since childhood

have I seen the full night sky of summer

one evening in New Mexico far outside of town

exclaiming “O, the Starry Vault in all its majesty!”

to my host’s surprise and my own little embarrassment

but maybe if Henry had oozed

Sirius, Rigel, Capella, Vega, Arcturus, and Betelgeuse

or The Belt at Half Past Leaves

he might have sung a different tune

for that too can suggest infinity

he might have eventually he just didn’t have the time

 

Love Triangle           

 

Equilateral and most compatible

were Jupiter Mars and the Moon

tintinnabulating away before the dawn of the day

striking sounds from the silent sky

 

Now that this ménage is over

they’ll be going their separate ways

but they’ll reunite again

to play for me someday

 

But will I be around for that conclave most Euclidean

when Venus replaces Mars

who are you kiddying

that’s twenty five years from now

 

Before the Rise               

 

With its back to the East

a Temple of Karnak Space Forest may be at its best%